It's Complicated: Plant-Based Burger Vs. Beef-Burger
Several months back I struck up a conversation with a New Zealand cattle farmer about plant-based meat. As we spoke, she excitedly pointed her finger out the window at a cow chomping away at the grass on a sunny day. She demanded to know how it was possible that a plant-based burger could have less of an impact on the environment than that cow that is right out back. Doesn’t the cow take less processing? Isn’t it more “natural” to eat just grass-fed beef? And what about all the environmental impacts associated with growing large amounts of yellow field peas, which are one of the primary crops that go into making plant-based protein products?
Yellow field peas that are growing in popularity to be processed into pea protein isolates.
Cattle on a regenerative livestock operation.
While traveling through New Zealand, a country that is very much focused on livestock agriculture, I have been confronted with this question time and time again. As a former vegetarian for environmental reasons (I’m taking a break while I am traveling) and someone that has done extensive work with farmers in the U.S. to diversify their crop mix to include yellow field peas, I am fascinated by this topic. I am currently working on a holistic regeneratively managed livestock operation and decided it is the perfect time to really dig into the plant-based meat vs animal meat question. Frankly, the short answer to the farmer that asked me two months back to compare a plant-based patty to her cow out back is that there is no simple answer.
One of the key principles when regeneratively managing livestock is to rotate in large mobs across the land often.
You can find articles and information with data supporting either side of the meat vs no meat conundrum. It is incredibly complicated to run a full lifecycle assessment of the impact on a beef patty versus a veggie patty. There are so many variables that go into measuring the “environmental impact” of food that make this a very difficult and subjective exercise without one agreed upon method of running such analysis. Just to name a few of the variables that can be measured: water use, GHG emissions, soil health, land use, etc. Diving even deeper into this list you must ask questions like, does water use include all of the water it takes to maintain livestock on a daily basis or just to process the animal? And, does GHG emissions include the transportation and additional processing involved in turning pea protein into a veggie burger? Without a single methodology you will find that studies funded by the likes of the Cattlemen's Association will find that veggie patties are not any better for the environment, whilst studies conducted by Beyond Burger or Impossible Foods may come to the opposite conclusion.
While you can find articles and studies supporting either side of the equation, there are a couple of conclusions that I have come to based on my work on farms and reading copious articles on the topic. So, if you are wondering what to think about the faux-meat vs meat debate, chew on this.
It is a processing question
When reading studies and articles that demonstrate that veggie patties are not any more eco-friendly than beef patties, the point of the amount of processing comes up quite often. For example, one Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology study conducted in 2009 found that on a plate to plate comparison, producing peas uses only a small percentage of the energy used to produce the equivalent number of calories in pork. However, the energy comparison of producing a pea-burger and a pork chop are about the same.The extra processing that it takes to get vegetables into a meat-like option puts a lot of the energy use back on the table. In my opinion, the new faux meat products and tastier veggie-patty options are doing a great job of educating and encouraging consumers to eat a more plant-based diet, but they are also oversimplifying the argument of a meat vs. no-meat debate. Ultimately, there is increasing evidence that the best diet for planetary and human health is a largely unprocessed plant-based diet. Just because you are eating a pea-burger versus a beef burger does not necessarily mean that you are making the greenest or healthiest decision. The amount of processing and the distance from farm to plate makes a huge difference when calculating the food’s environmental impact.
It is an energy calculation
Over the past five years when I would explain to people my reasons for being a vegetarian I would dive into a well-practiced explanation of bio-trophic levels and the amount of energy it takes to eat a plant based diet versus a meat eating diet. For me, it isn’t about animal rights or thinking that it is morally wrong to kill animals, it is about the science of looking at how the sun’s energy moves through an ecosystem. Plants photosynthesize using chlorophyll to turn energy from the sun into food. The next rungs up the ladder of the bio-trophic food web use more energy. For example, cows eating the grass. Cow’s don’t efficiently convert plant-based feeds into muscle or milk, so they end up eating more feed and therefore consuming more energy than if we were to just eat the “grass” or a plant-based diet in the first place. As a herbivore, you are eating closer to the bottom of the food chain and therefore using less energy to feed yourself than if you were eating an animal based diet. (View diagram). Although it is important to point out that energy efficiency can quickly diminish if, for example, you were eating supermarket greens in the winter. Since growing greens in a winter climate requires heating and uses greenhouse gasses, and then uses additional energy to store, refrigerate and ship, much of your energy savings by eating a plant-based diet can quickly be diminished. This is just one way to illustrate that it isn’t a simple answer.
Source: https://www.letstalkacademy.com/publication/read/ECOSYSTEM
It is highly dependent on farm practices
If I really loved meat and wanted to spend the money to purchase meat farmed in an environmentally sustainable way, I believe that would be the best way to “vote with my dollar” in terms of what our farming system should look like. I do believe that livestock plays a critical role in a truly regenerative farming system. Regenerative farming is the concept of doing things in sync with nature and restoring the land rather than depleting its resources. Grazing livestock in a holistic and regenerative way can actually be a great way to manage pastureland. According to Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, well-managed pastureland retains topsoil incredibly well and switching from row crops to pastureland can cut soil erosion by 93%. Cows can be great grass farmers. This points to my answer to the New Zealand farmer that was grazing her cow out back and asked if a burger made from peas or her cow is better for the environment. Most likely, her cow is the better answer in my opinion, but the truth of the matter is that the majority of beef produced in our system today is not regeneratively managed. The U.S. manufactured grain-fed beef system has entirely different environmental impacts and consequences than a regeneratively managed pasture-raised cow. If you really want to know the impact of your beef burger you have to go all the way back to the farm where it was raised.
Some argue that growing large mono-crop fields of peas to make plant-based burgers isn’t any better for the environment than a beef-based patty.
All of these points can be summarized into the fact that it can’t be oversimplified. The statement in Impossible Food’s 2019 Impact Report calling regenerative grazing “the clean coal of meat” is incredibly problematic in my opinion. Regenerative livestock operations still make up an incredibly small percentage of all meat produced. As humans, we yearn for black and white answers but the plant-based patty versus meat patty answer just isn’t one of them.
What I do believe is that eating a largely plant-based diet with minimally processed foods is the option that is best for the environment and human health. I think that the alternative meat companies are doing a good job of raising awareness of our diet’s impact on the environment and ultimately are creating good by bringing the conversation of our diet’s impact on the environment into mainstream culture. I believe that every time we eat, we are making an economic, environmental and political decision. We can impact the world by the decisions that we make on a daily basis starting with the food that we put on our plates.
Additional Sources and Interesting Reads: